BOOK SYNOPSIS
Jesse Bram, an Eldre of mixed breed, is marooned on the post apocalyptic shunned planet URth where technology and books have been destroyed. The Galactic Federation suspects him of treason. His sweetheart Stella and an enigmatic Trinian policeman search for him among the fanatic URthlings.

BOOK EXCERPTS
The Witnesses

Stella Naasko was called into the courtroom of the Galactic Federation to witness to the Board of Inquiry. She stopped at the barrier and took a long look around the room to gain time to muster her courage. Like all purebred Eldres, she was tall, with white skin, small, round ears, and, though mammalian, had blond hair barely adequate to cover her head and almost no eyebrows. In a few years, like other Eldres, she would probably be bald.

What she saw in the court was not reassuring. Hanging ominously above her head was a glass bell large enough to enclose the witness box entirely, and there were menacing tubes and instruments beside it.

Her right hand moved involuntarily to the zipper at the throat of her shining, aluminized unif and she steadied herself with her other hand at the railing.

"Do not be afraid of the paraphernalia at the box," a synthesized voice said. "We must be prepared for witnesses from species all over the galaxy. Some of them cannot breathe this atmosphere and must be enclosed. As a native Eldre you do not need the bell. Please come forward."

Stella looked at the raised platform where the voice came from.

She was relieved that one of them was an Eldre like herself. At least he was mammalian, with only two arms, a single head, and air breathing. His judge’s hood had been dropped back on his shoulders to accommodate a headset that was set carelessly over one ear. His age was uncertain--Stella had difficulty determining the age of anyone over thirty.

The judge at her left was not as easy to look at--a Trinian. The only Trinian she had seen before was in a hologram in a textbook at school. She had read that their diet consisted mostly of a garlic-like root eaten raw with the dirt on, which gave Trinians unpleasant bad breath. This Trinian was, fortunately, too far away for her to smell his breath. Like all Trinians, he was blue, had hairless, leathery skin, and deeply sunken yellow eyes that glowed in the depths of his eye sockets.

The third judge was a Stygian, an aquatic creature from a dark, cold planet with a liquid surface that did not freeze even at minus 20 centigrade. The Stygian had to be kept immersed in a chilled, translucent cylinder. The humidity of the courtroom had condensed on the cold surface of the cylinder and turned to frost near the pipes that entered it at the side.

Stella could make out movement of something sinister inside and saw a lidless eye on a stalk press briefly against the surface to get a look at her before retreating into the darkness of its tank. The life support system supplying the cylinder hissed softly and rumbled as a compressor came on and a jet of vapor escaped from a valve and condensed on the icy surface.

It was a formidable panel of judges.

The Eldre judge beaconed for Stella to step into the witness box.

"You are Stella Naasko?"

"Yes."

"Do you know why you have been called here?"

"No."

There was a bubbling and movement inside the Stygian’s cylinder and an odd synthesized voice asked, "You are the companion female to Jesse Bram, yes/no?"

Stella blushed. Companion female sounded to her like a live-in arrangement. It did not sound like the appropriate description for Jesse’s steady girlfriend.

"She means to ask if you are engaged to Jesse Bram."

"We are going together. We’re not engaged, but..."

She was interruped by the Trinian’s gravelly voice. "If this witness is in love with Jesse Bram, she can hardly be expected to speak the truth about him. Naturally she will protest his loyalty to the Federation. I cannot see what use this is."

AUTHOR BIO
Though born in Chicago and raised in Indiana, Harley L. Sachs considers himself an international, having lived in Germany, Sweden, Scotland, and Denmark. He earned a degree in English at Indiana University, then served in the US Army in Germany. After getting his Master's degree at I.U. he returned to Europe and worked under cover for several years. He met and married Ulla Hintz in Stockholm, Sweden and they spent a year's honeymoon in a Scottish castle. Returning to the USA, Sachs taught English briefly at Southern Illinois University then moved to Michigan Technological University in the Upper Peninsula where he and his wife raised three daughters. He took early retirement and now divides the year between Michigan and Portland, Oregon.

BOOK REVIEWS
“It’s got everything-- it’s visual, auditory, an adventure with some romance, a very relevant satire of our beaurocratic society and it has real philosophical and spiritual depth. Ideally, you could get some controversy going over the significance of it, particularly in relation to the positive relationship between Judaism and Christianity. I think it is brilliant. Wonderful, wonderful! And funny also.” -- Pam Erbisch.